Bill,
I think this area is a tricky one and I am not an engineer. The trail goes silly as it approaches full extension. You can verify this by watching the front wheel as you let it down off a jack. The wheel rotates substantially as you start and then much less as the springs compress. If you grab the brake at or near full extension the Girdraulics seize for the simple reason that the trail has to change for the forks to move up and down. With the brake engaged it is difficult for the trail to change and correspondingly the fork cannot compress. Originally, I designed a new triple tree that changed the geometry of the Girdraulic so this would not occur. Later after studying the Brampton I realized that if I used a spring with no preload, it would bias the suspension toward compression. “Weak” and “Strong” can be confusing words with reference to springs. My springs seem to be much stronger because of the higher spring rate, 110 pounds per inch versus 50 pounds per inch for the Thorntons. However, with no preload the effective starting rate is near zero. This makes them quite compliant. The weaker Thorntons or stock springs have as much as 300 pounds of preload, so in reality they are quite difficult to compress when mounted.
David